In the oilfield, work crews drill wells to access reservoirs of oil and gas. During the drilling process, the crews typically use the drill string to circulate drilling fluid through the borehole. The drilling fluid reduces frictional forces, flushes out the cuttings, and perhaps most importantly, counters the formation pressures that might otherwise produce undesired fluid inflows, blowouts, and hole collapses. Additives are frequently introduced to the drilling fluid to tailor its properties for these purposes, but regardless, the fluids that have entrained and mixed with formation fluids and drill cuttings must be handled with care to avoid polluting the environment.
One common approach, particularly advantageous at well sites having limited resources and/or limited disposal space, is to capture the exhausted drilling fluid for cleaning and re-use. To this end, the industry has developed a variety of technologies for separating drill cuttings and other contaminants from drilling fluid, including shakers, de-sanders, desilters, and centrifuges. Often, multiple such separation units are combined together with feed tanks, overflow containers, retention pits, augers, pumps, and valves to regulate the fluid flow rates between and among the units (as well as the feed rates of any additives to the flow stream). Conventionally, the various units are designed and individually optimized by their respective manufacturers using proprietary software and technology. The combination of units is selected and assembled for static operation in a wide variety of conditions, a strategy that necessarily limits the overall performance of the system. Moreover, the proprietary technology of the various units presents barriers to coordinated operation of the individually-acquired separation units.
It should be understood, however, that the specific embodiments given in the drawings and detailed description thereto do not limit the disclosure. On the contrary, they provide the foundation for one of ordinary skill to discern the alternative forms, equivalents, and modifications that are encompassed together with one or more of the given embodiments in the scope of the appended claims.